"Going on a long journey, and a fellow about my size and complexion is going along with you, and there's money coming—"
"Sure hot!" It was then Miss Schump, with fear of a rather growing and sickening sense of dizziness and of the wavy and unstable outline of things, slipped quietly and unobtrusively out into the hallway, her craving for air not to be gainsaid. The door to the little bedroom stood open, her pink scarf uppermost on the cot-edge. She stood for an instant in the doorway, regarding and wanting it, but quite as suddenly turned, and down the three flights gained the dewy quiet of out-of-doors, fighting muzziness.
The street had long since fallen tranquil, the Greek church casting immense shadow. The air had immediate and sedative effect upon Miss Schump's rather distressing symptoms of unrest, but not quite allaying a certain state of mental upheaval. She had the distinct sensation of the top of her head lifted off from the eyebrows up. Her state of light-headedness took voice.
"Gimme," she said, lifting the pink-mull, ankle-length skirt as if it trailed a train and marching off down-street; "now you gimme!"
An entirely new lack of self-consciousness enhanced her state of giddiness. A titter seemed to run just a scratch beneath the surface of her.
The passing figure of a woman in a black cape and a bulge of bundle elicited a burst of laughter which her hand clapped to her mouth promptly subdued. Awaiting the passing of a street-car, she was again prone to easy laughter.
"Oh, you!" she said, quirking an eye to the motorman, who quirked back.
Crossing the street, she came down rather splashily in a pool of water, wetting and staining the light slippers.
"Aw!" she repeated, scolding and stamping down at them. "Aw! Aw! You!"
Across from the gloomy pile of old Jefferson Market, she stood, reading up at an illuminated tower-clock, softly, her lips moving.